1x04 Eight Diagram Dragon Palm

[7.4/10] What do you know! A pretty good episode! I wasn’t sure Iron Fist could muster that. It’s encouraging!

It’s far from perfect, and there’s still some of the issues with clunkiness and the limitations of the show’s lead at play, but there is a potency here missing in the prior three installments of the series. Much of that comes from a certain unity in theme – the notion in various individuals that punishment, harshness, makes a person stronger. The obvious conduits for that are Ward, Danny, and Colleen.
Ward’s is pretty obvious. Seeing the father who has always been cold to and exacting of him embrace Danny so openly and emotionally, even if it seems like an act, has to be hard for him. We see the reappearance of his ominous little pill pack that he dips into before taking his dad’s phone call, a sign that this contentious relationship with his dad is a stress.

But Harold Meachum clearly thinks that this is the right way to mold his son to greatness. We got an indication in the last episode, with the belt escapade, that it’s how his father molded him. Every compliment that Harold gives his son comes with a dose of tough love, referring to “screw ups” and constantly challenging his son, while being stingy with praise. It’s having an effect on Ward, but perhaps not the one Harold wants.

Though maybe it is. As Joy points out, Ward has (with no doubt some influence from his Dad pulling the strings) steered the Rand Corporation into success, to where she’s content not to push him too hard on his decisions. It’s turned him into the type of man who knows how to bait a reporter into turning the story of Danny’s return from one of an inmate being allowed to run the asylum, so to speak, into one of a “Corporate Hero.” But there’s the suggestion that this has come at a cost – a sense that Ward has struggled without the feeling that his father genuinely loves him, something that requires chemical coping and which is aggravated by seeing Danny taken in with open arms in a fashion that must open up old wounds.

But Danny has his wounds as well. We only get hints at what I’m sure will be fleshed out more later, but Danny recounts to Joy the intensity of his training in Kunlun. Failure, as he puts it, resulted in victory, and success only led to more training. He too was driven to achieve something by the sense that it was being denied of him, only to attain it and wonder if it’s what he really wanted. It’s brief, but it creates a thematic connection between him and Ward, and shows that despite their very different upbringings and demeanors, they have more in common than it might seem on the surface.

But the third piece of the puzzle here is Colleen Wing, who creates an interesting contrast to the other two. While Ward was pushed by his father and Danny was pushed by the monks, Colleen is pushing herself. In the best scene of the episode, she trains to the strains of hiphop, showing an intensity and fluidity all her own, and knocks off an arm of her training apparatus. There is the sense that she is pushing herself, tasting the thrill of the difficult conditions that lingered with Ward and Danny.

That culminates in her returning to the cage fighting arena and taking on two combatants at once. It’s another nice little action sequence, one that sees Colleen straying from the code she’s trying to impart to her students, and give into the urge to fight. As she explains to Danny, she’s not doing this for money, with the intimation being that the challenge, the chance to use her skills without holding back, compels her in a way that may be dangerous.

The only problem with the episode is that it’s starting to get into the business with The Hand, and that’s a fairly mixed bag. On the one hand, we get a little clarity on what Harold’s dealings with them are, and the notion that they revived him (presumably the same way they revived Elektra) and now he’s in their debt creates some interesting shading around the character.

On the other hand, Danny’s fight with a bunch of goons who are mad about the real estate deal for the pier that The Hand maneuvered feels like empty calories. Sure, it’s entertaining enough to see Danny dodging hatchets from The Triad and knocking heads in split screen like a Kung Fu movie, but in contrast to the scene with Colleen, there’s not much of a point to it on a moment-to-moment basis beyond “watch Danny kick ass and save Joy.”

That, naturally, leads to some brief, not-so-subtle, underwhelming love triangle material with Danny, Joy, and Colleen. Danny and Colleen’s awkward “I’ll jam your thumb back in place while I lecture you on fighting” business is as annoying as Danny’s latest opportunity to be holier than thou in the boardroom, but at least it’s short.

Still, we get a little more intrigue in the form of Madame Gao returning and making her presence felt in that nicely ominous way with Harold. Her letting him not only see Joy, but take out the guy who hit her. That’s the interesting counterpart to the opening with Ward and Danny. Harold clearly loves his daughter, enough to where he’s affected by getting to see her and angry enough to murder a man who would lay a finger on her firsthand.

Joy is the only major character in the episode free of those sorts of harsh influences. She is still a tough individual in the business realm, as seen in the way she closes the deal with Patel, but she seems softer and more human and less damaged than Ward does. To be frank, that seems like a feint, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see Ward and Joy’s sweet kid/mean kid roles reversed, but it makes for an interesting contrast in the show’s best episode so far.

(Side note – while I enjoy the reference, I refuse to believe that Karen has a shot at the front page of the paper after her 5th grade essay from the end of S2 of Daredevil. Also, Carrie Anne Moss is only in this episode for two scenes, but she’s great in both of them, from her slightly perturbed headshake when Danny waves to her at his press conference, to her giving him a “word to the wise” in his office. She is a superb talent who livens every scene she’s in.)